Internet usage has any remarkable influence on students academic performance

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1    Background to the study

The Internet is a relatively new channel for scholarly resources, and contains vast quantities of information that vary a great deal regarding its contents, aim, target group, reliability etc. Hence, it is important that the end-user is aware of the diverse information available on the Internet, and educated in the criteria by which the information content should be assessed (Chapman, 2002). The fabulous growth in telecommunication has brought online services, specialized electronic networks, WebPages, E-mail, software and global information resources to our homes as well as to education.

The Internet provides an environment in which millions of people participate and engage in the creation and exchange of

information (Rose & Fernlund, 1997).

Students have only recently received the opportunity to use the Internet to seek and obtain scholarly material and, consequently, knowledge on how effectively they make use of this channel is limited. Students' information seeking culminates as they work on their theses. Many studies have been conducted regarding the type of information the endusers seek and obtain on the Internet and in which circumstances they prefer electronic sources to paper sources (Tenopir et al. 2003)

According to their survey, approximately 50% of all the scholarly publications were obtained from the Internet, who studied geography student's use of sources on the Internet by analyzing citations from a test, found that 51% of the citations referred to sources on paper, 47% of the sources were from the Internet and the rest was course material. (Fescemeyer, 2000)

Iboronke (2002) has attributed the poor performance to the rise in students enrolment without corresponding increase in the material and human resources. In this study the effect of these materials and human resources on students performance will be investigated.

        The use of the available learning resources will improve the academic performance of students. In order words, one of the opportunities to stimulate this elaboration process is by offering students more and more diverse learning resources. Ogunleye’s (2003) review that under laboratory conditions increasing the richness and diversity of the learning materials has often been shown to support students in learning, remembering and applying information.

Internet use has become very popular in many areas as well as in education in recent years. Accordingly, Internet access in schools has increased greatly over the last 20 years (Berson, 2000).

Many experts see the computer, combined with multimedia capabilities, as the new tool that can transform education (Van Horn, 1991) points out that the computer can solve many of the problems facing teachers. In today's environment the teacher is expected to have a large knowledge base. The teacher also has the problem of deciding to teach at the low end or the high end of the grade level. Many compromise and teach in the middle. Computers can solve these two problems by enabling teachers to customize instruction for each student (McKeown, 1991).

1.2    Statement of problem

        The role of Internet in teaching/learning can not be overemphasized. The issue of the poor academic performance of students is traced to certain factors which, can hinder student understanding.

Academic achievement is an important parameter in measuring success in students. Observations and reports have shown that success or high academic achievement has become a Herculean task to accomplish by students in recent times. The decline in the academic performance of students in Nigerian universities had been highlighted by Soyinka (1999), when he observed that university system in Nigeria needed restructuring. He went further to say that academic standard had fallen drastically and the quality of graduates being produced by the nations universities is questionable and subject to re-examination. Poor academic achievement of students has been of great concern to educationists, government and the public in general.

Students' poor performance in Secondary school has continued to pose a serious concern to government agencies, parents and the students themselves (Essien 2004). Most previous studies had tended to attribute this problem to factors that are extraneous to the learner, such as poor physical facilities, school environment etc. Various strategies adopted by different governments and agencies tend not to address the problem substantially. There is therefore further need to research into other possible factors or variables underlying students' performance, since behaviour is a product of environmental and psychosocial variables.

1.3    The purpose of study

          The major purpose of this study is to determine whether internet usage has any remarkable influence on students academic performance. Specifically, the study seeks to determine whether:

i.             Internet usage can enhance academic performance students.

ii.            The use of search engines can improve the academic performance of students.

iii.          E-mail services improve academic performance of students.

1.5    Research questions

          These research seeks to answers the following questions in the course of this investigation.

i.             How does internet usage influence the academic performance of students?

ii.            To what extent does the use of search engine enhance the academic performance of students?

iii.          Does E-mail services contribute to students academic performance?

1.6    Research hypothesis

          The following hypotheses were formulated to guide the investigation of this study.

i.             There is no significant relationship between the use of internet and students academic performance. 

ii.            There is no significant relationship between the use of search engine and students academic performance.

iii.          There is no significant relationship between e-mail services and students academic performance.

1.7    Significant of study

          the outcome of this study aims at determining whether or not the use of internet has any significant influence on the academic performance of students.

        More over education is the bedrock of any society. Nigeria as a developing nation needs a standard secondary schools that has available learning resources, that teachers can improvise learning resources easily and more often also where teachers and students utilize learning resources on a regular basis. It could be a guide line for incoming students and be educative to them when writing and studying similar problems in school.

        This study has made me to explore into the topic influence of internet usage on the academic performance of students. It is also a requirement I must be produce for the award of a degree in curriculum and teaching, faculty of education.

1.8    Delimitation of the study

          This research is designed particularly to know or test the influence of internet usage on the academic performance of students in order to guide against negative trend about the falling standard of education in our society and to improve upon the positive side.

1.9    Limitation of the study

          A lot of problems were encountered during the period of this research like; finance, transportation from one secondary school to another, some of the issues were not discussed in detail.

        Another problem was distance. Due to the long distance from one village to another within the local government area, it was not possible for the researcher to move round all the villages for  sufficient data.

        Also, during the administration of the questionnaires, some students were not willing to respond to the items. Some refused to answer the questions out of non challanteness. It was also observed that in some cases, students were not independent of themselves in answering the questionnaire items.

1.11  Definition of terms

          The following terms are define in the context there are being use in the study.

Internet: The Internet is a global network connecting millions of computers.

Performance: An action in which excellence or superiority depend primarily on abstract mental ability. Any action requiring the manipulation of abstracts, concepts or mental manipulation of any sort.

E-mail: Email is electronic mail, a protocol for receiving and sending, and storing electronic messages.

Search engine: a program that searches for and identifies items in a database that correspond to keywords or characters specified by the user, used especially for finding particular sites on the Internet.

Social network: a network of social interactions and personal relationships.

Website: a location connected to the Internet that maintains one or more web pages.

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